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Forthcoming publication Gospel of Judas

Pierluigi Piovanelli reports on PaleoJudaica.com: . . . I attended the Annual Meeting of the AELAC in Dole (France), together with Francois Bovon, Stanley

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, Jul 4, 2004

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Pierluigi Piovanelli reports on PaleoJudaica.com:
". . . I attended the Annual Meeting of the AELAC in Dole (France),
together with Francois Bovon, Stanley Jones, Nicole Kelly, Stephen
Shoemaker, as well as many French, Italian, and Swiss colleagues.
The AELAC meeting was, as usual, very interesting, but it was today
[Thursday], during the 8th International Congress of Coptic Studies,
here in Paris, that I heard of a new and exciting "apocryphal"
discovery, that I would like to share with you.
Rodolphe Kasser (University of Geneva) announced that he is going to
publish a Coptic papyrus codex of 31 folios (62 pages). The manuscript
is written in Sahidic and can be dated, on paleographical grounds, to
the 4th/5th century. It is rather damaged and in poor and fragmentary
conditions. It comes from Muhazafat Al Minya, in Middle Egypt, and is
presently hold by a Swiss Foundation.
The codex contains three "treatises": (1) the Epistle of Peter to
Philip, (2) the First Apocalypse of James (both of them are also present
among the NHC but, according to Kasser, in a "different version"), and
(3) ca. 31 pages of the previously unknown Gospel of Judas!
For Kasser there are no doubts that we have here the text of the
"blasphemous" work bearing the same title that Irenaeus criticized in
his Refutation of All the Heresies.
Kasser's publication is (hopefully) scheduled for the end of 2005.
In the discussion, James Robinson pointed out that, some years ago,
Stephen Emmel had already seen such a codex and made a brief mention of
it. Could it be a new and previously unknown NHC?
In any case, this is a major discovery not only for Coptic, Gnostic or
apocryphal studies, but also for ancient Judaism and early
Christianity."
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The Gospel of Judas is today only known as a title through Irenaeus
(adv. haer. I 31,1) and Epiphanius.
Acc. to Schneemelcher it's a book of the so called Kainites, a group
associated with the Nikolaites, Karpokrates and similar Gnostics. The
Gospel probably contains a Passion account which explains the MUSTHRION
PRODOSIAS, that Judas through his betrayal allows for the universal
salvation.
Schneemelcher dates the Gospel roughly to 130-170 CE.